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How to Be in Two Places at Once: The Firesign Theatre in the US and Vietnam

Four comedians trained in poetry and psy-ops, Firesign Theatre created dense, album-length art-objects that could take multiple spins to understand. Comedy in the form of abrasive soundscapes that reviewers were as likely to call “frightening” as “funny.” This week, we explore how these albums were heard: in groups, at teenage house parties, in poet John Ashbery’s pot smoke-filled living room, and on military bases in Vietnam.

FROM THIS EPISODE

Between 1967 and 1975, the Firesign Theatre put out nine albums that carved out a new space somewhere between comedy, sound art, literature, and rock and roll. The music critic Robert Christgau called them “a comedy group that uses the recording studio at least as brilliantly as any rock group.”

In this episode, we focus not on how those albums were made, but how they were heard. From teenage house parties to soldiers’ barracks in Vietnam, the Firesign Theatre infiltrated thousands of American headphones and hi-fis. Jeremy Braddock, a scholar and critic currently writing a book on Firesign, brings us the story of how the group’s psychedelic psy-ops tactics created a new kind of collective listening in America.